Drawing largely upon Einstein's unpublished correspondence, the lecture
will focus on the vagaries of Einstein's personal and public life after his
rise to international fame. Following the 1919 British solar eclipse
expedition, which propelled him into the wider European and international
arena, Einstein became involved in numerous social and humanitarian
initiatives, while simultaneously engaging in the popularization of
relativity. How Einstein navigated intense scientific work and at times
hostile political waters is reflected in many of his now forgotten
writings.

Diana Kormos Buchwald is Professor of History at the
California Institute of Technology. Initially trained as an X-ray
crystallographer of bio-organic compounds, she completed a PhD in the
history of modern science at Harvard University, and went on to publish a
scientific biography of the Nobel Prize winning German physical chemist
Walther Nernst. Since 2000 she has served as General Editor & Director
of the
Einstein Papers Project
at Caltech, which publishes The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, one of
the most ambitious publishing ventures ever undertaken in the documentation
of the history of science.